7 common pitfalls in contract management (and how to avoid them)

Because contract management is a cross-departmental effort that involves multiple teams, it is important to keep everyone sharp and rowing in the same direction. As your company scales, so does the complexity it has to deal with at the contract level. Perhaps one more budget owner wants a look-over. Did legal approve the latest version? And what about that verbal sign-off you got from the head of risk? 

Contracts need to be simple and straightforward. The reality is: they take long to make, longer to get signed, and the process of resolving a potential dispute post-signature is yet (you guessed it) longer. 

Docfield was designed to support collaboration across teams and across organisations. We’ve spoken to countless teams and learned about where the inefficiencies and pitfalls lie. It has informed the way we think about our product and think it’d be valuable to share a couple of them below. 

1. Unclear roles and responsibilities

Without clear roles, contracts get lost, stalled, and pushed down the priority ladder. Organisations spend countless meeting hours discussing strategy only to drop the ball on the dotted line of their contracts. This is precisely when teams need to be precise. But, it is admittedly a complex process, so it’s worth investing in a tool that fits your contracting workflow. 

How to avoid it? Acquire a CLM system, or log into your existing one. Clearly assign roles within the system. Define who is responsible for drafting, reviewing, approving, and managing each contract. Docfield’s role-based access controls and custom workflows ensure clarity and accountability at each stage of a contract’s lifecycle. 

2. Manual contract processes

In 2025 a great deal of manual processes related to contracting can be supported with automations. At each stage of the contracting lifecycle, from drafting, to approvals, to dashboards with data – automations reduce the possibility of errors and delays. Importantly, they free up team members to focus on high-value task time. 

How to avoid it? Automations can live in many systems, optimising for different use-cases related to your contracts. However, perhaps the most important feature of a complete CLM lies in its completeness; reducing the need for multiple systems. Ultimately, having multiple systems means multiple sources of truth, and (usually) manual processes of collecting, checking, and update data that lives in these various systems. Investing in a complete CLM like Docfield will greatly reduce your reliance on manual contracting processes, beyond the list of features you see on the pricing page!

3. Poor visibility

Poor visibility is a direct consequence of poor hygiene, and a direct cause of poor business performance. It is absolutely critical to avoid this, as the most costly mistakes are made when teams start missing deadlines, look over key contract terms, skip parts of the process, and lose sight of the right version of an agreement. You should be able to locate contracts with ease, and loop in the right people at the right time. 

WorldCC claims that 85% of executives signing an agreement lack sufficient visibility into KPI criteria at the time of signature. 

How to avoid it? Centralise contracts in a single CLM platform with search and version control capabilities. Docfield ensures stakeholders always access the correct, up-to-date contract versions, eliminating the chaos of manual searches. Audit trails capture this. 

4. Inefficient negotiations

Prolonged negotiations slow deal closures and impact organisational agility. We wrote more about it here. Negotiations can be very constructive and necessary, but it can be difficult to streamline a process that emerges from imperfect information. 

How to avoid it? A great way to communicate that some parts of your agreement are universal and non-negotiable is by leveraging the Docfield CLM to make these parts of the text ‘static’ as opposed to ‘editable’. Aside from that, you’ll enjoy the benefit of a live-editor with real-time comments, and redlining. 

5. Weak collaboration across teams

As we introduced this article we touched upon the fact that contracts are typically a product of many teams working together. Not only must each team be on top of their game individually, it must also hold true collectively.  Legal, sales or procurement, risk, compliance, budget owners, CFOs and ultimately a director must all be on the same page. Handovers to teams must be complete and bottlenecks must be avoided.  

How to avoid it? Choose a CLM solution that encourages cross-team collaboration. Focus on a CLM that offers real-time collaboration tools, integrated approvals, and role-based access controls. Read more about it here. 

6. Lack of performance tracking

There are 6 stages that make up contract lifecycle management. What happens before the signature is of course important. But what happens after the signature tends to span a much greater period of time, and can lead to a lot of complexity. That is why it is so important to leverage contract data to do the heavy lifting for you. What is the data telling you?

How to avoid it: Actively monitor performance using your CLM system. Docfield provides analytics and insights in the form of dashboards, helping you measure performance, alerting you to deviations, and suggesting opportunities for improvement.

7. Poor Contract Exit Management

Failing to manage contract renewals can result in unexpected costs and strained relationships. The renewal period presents businesses with a renewed opportunity to be agile; renegotiating terms, consolidating accounts, or simply terminating agreements that are no longer aligned with business strategy. It is one of the most common losses associated with poor contract management yet has a straightforward solution. 

How to avoid it: Proactive alerts ahead of your notice period ensure you always stay on top of your renewals, putting you in a much better position to adjust your strategy. Docfield CLM automates this for you. 

Conclusion

With a clear contracting strategy, organisations can avoid many of the pitfalls related to poor contract management. Equally important is a general awareness and strong collaboration between teams. Implementing a CLM system adds value to both of these key factors by drastically reducing friction, automating manual processes, and providing key insights from your contract data. If you want to learn more about how the Docfield CLM helps teams succeed, reach out to us today.